Editor's Notebook Community Views `Dad' Is An Honorary Title We Need To Earn Each Day Protecting The Rights Of The Minority PHIL JACOBS ED TOR LAURENCE !MERMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS Two of us sitting on the porch on a hot, humid sum- mer's night drink- ing Rolling Rock beer in the green pony" bottle. In the background was the sound of the radio crackling away the late innings of a base- ball game. I was 15 and I was with my best friend. Happened to be my dad. Before you call child protection, that was 26 years ago. He taught me that the beauty of summer night baseball back then meant sitting in the lounge chair, feet up on the black cast iron railing, with my homework, yet I never realized it would be something I'd long for as an adult. I hope for all of you that you have moments that mean next to nothing to anyone other than you and your father. It's unfortunate that the rela- tionship between a dad and his children isn't expressed with a type of passion and intimacy. Fathers need not separate themselves from their children. They need to establish a rela- tionship with their kids as indi- viduals. Each child, no matter how similar or even "from the same womb," is different. Rela- tionships should be fashioned to the individual, with the thought listening to the hum of the up- stairs bedroom window air con- ditioner, and sipping some beer. It was special. It was our passion, - and this was something he shared with me, only with me. It didn't matter whatever it was he shared with my older sister, or my mother or his friends. I told him about my girlfriend, he told me what it was like to date when he was 15. We'd stop and listen to the crowd noise applaud someone's home run. There were moths spinning around the porch light. It was more than helping me that any comment, event, dis- cussion can and will be remem- bered. All of us have those memories. Not to get preachy, because there are certainly experts and plenty of literature out there, not to mention the Torah, that can teach us how to form lasting, im- portant, involved relationships with our children. From my amateur, uneducat- ed post in life, I and a zillion oth- er fathers can tell you that it's the little things that bond a father to a son or daughter. No, that's not out of the inside of a greeting II " /-' card, but it's true. But before you go around claiming the little things, there are some big items you need to take care of if they apply. They include not abusing your chil- dren, physically, emotionally or sexually. Don't expect the word dad to really mean something positive until you take care of this in a positive way. Cruelty, no matter how small, is a memory that won't go away. If you are a dad and you haven't given your wife a get, do it. If you aren't paying your child support payments on time, take care of it. Or, if for some reason you haven't spoken to your father ha months or even years, don't just be a dad, but be a man: You make the first step. A friend didn't talk to his parents for, six years because of an argument that wasn't worth not talking for six seconds. After he and his wife had children, twins, he called his father. His words: "Dad, this argument we have, we can settle, but it shouldn't be your grandchildren's argu- ment as well." That was being a fa- ther, that was being a strong man. All of us have these stories, these moments. You are allowed to be an- gry at your dad, you are allowed at times not to be so proud of him. When we did the "Six Days In October" photo special, many of the pho- tos were of fathers study- ing Torah with their children. These were im- portant. But equally im- portant were photos of children caught playing in autumn leaves. Im- portant, because in some cases their dads saw the passion, the love they had in their child's play. There are men in the Detroit area who might not be your parent, but who are father figures to you. They could be a friend, a rabbi, a supervisor, a mentor. These are people who provide examples for you, posi- tive ones. It's okay to give them a Father's Day greeting as well. Father's Day is not something that happens only this Sunday. We're fathers every day, every moment of the year. Just re- member that anybody can "fa- ther" a child, it seems like, in this day and age. The name "Daddy" is something you earn. ❑ My friend David, the amateur his- torian, loves to play a game. He tries to envision how his ances- tors might re- spond to con- temporary is- sues. I always belittled his diver- sion as silly, similar to the old TV program in which historical figures grappled with current- day problems. To my surprise, I recently engaged in the same intellectual exercise while re- turning from Lansing. I had given testimony on be- half of the Jewish Community Council before a state Senate committee examining the ques- tion of school prayer. The com- mittee, composed largely of small-town conservatives, was not a receptive audience and I left the capital doubting whether my words had made any differ- ence. The long road home from Lansing allows one time to pon- der. I won- dered how my forebears would have felt about such a weighty question as the First Amendment's religion clauses. Rufus "Fancy Pants" Ruben- stein peddled dry goods to the miners during the California gold rush of 1848. His letters to his mother in Syracuse spoke in terms of survival and dreams of returning home with enough money to start his own busi- ness. Constitutional questions were far from his immediate concerns. After the Civil War, family members moved to the lumber towns of northern Michigan. The key words for them, based on their correspondence, were "acceptance" and "tolerance." My grandmother's presiden- cy of the Manistique Women's Club had little to do with her re- ligion and much to do with my grandfather being a merchant in the city. She would not have wanted to "rock the boat" by raising church/state concerns — by invoking the specter of the Christian majority struggling with a Jewish minority. The first allusion to the reli- gion clauses in the family archives is found in an ex- change of letters between my grandfather and his son Sam when Sam attended Harvard Law School in the 1920s. My uncle spoke in general terms of the need for a better separation between what is church and what is state and that such a wall would be in the best inter- est of American Jews. However, my uncle, through his 70-year legal career, never spoke of minority rights. In- stead, personal rights were to be earned by outstanding achievement and upward mo- bility. He would not have mud- died the waters with church/state concerns. My parents framed church/state issues in terms of what I phrase "silent equality." They tolerated my reciting a prayer every morning in ele- mentary school. On the other hand, they also expected the public school to allow me to take Jewish religious holidays off without penalty and to treat Judaism co-equally with Chris- tianity. To invoke the Lord's name at a school event did not offend them as long as a rabbi and a minister alternated de- livering the prayer. My ances- tors, I am con- vinced, would never have tes- tified as I did that official school prayer — however worded — is wrong or argued against even a moment of silence. The Jew- ish community's advocacy of such positions evidences that Jews feel themselves to be full members of the American body politic and a part of this coun- try's economic and social main- stream. It is almost 150 years since Fancy Pants Rubenstein sold clothing to gold miners. The world of small-town America has been engulfed by a plural- istic, heterogenous America. Yet the forces promoting the inter- twining of government and re- ligion remain with us. The danger is the easy step from saying, "Let us pray," to official enforcement of a single reli- gion's supplication. The fight for minority reli- gious rights is a constant bat- tle. This battle includes educating children who in- creasingly may be raised in mixed families where accom- modation to different religious traditions is a fact of life. It in- volves teaching those who might feel the struggle is now of an academic concern. Com- pliancy about protecting our rights is our most vicious foe. El Laurence !merman is a Birmingham attorney.